my 2c on when lightbox (and other NZ providers) will do CC is either when govt pass laws forcing it, but they are busy sorting out lost suitcases at airport at present, which waaaay more important then this, or in 20 - 30 years time when the current 30, 40 year old people - (that is cut off point for mainstream tech people that do streaming currently - number drop off in older age brackets currently) get to an age that the hearing is stuffed form air plug music and car stereos and need CC, the cost vs extra money will make sense to do then.

Interesting to see there are issues with conversions due to differences in framerates etc, forced me to do a bit of research.

Ultimately my life is not worth living if I cannot consistently supply SWMBO with a simple to access source of captioned Coronation Street, MKR or MasterCheif.

for that list i would get a freeview PVR that save the CC stream with the shows - coronation street will be hard to get with CC and not 2 year in the future to NZ - with the PVR you can save the show like you did on the tivo and watch later, and as the list is prime time free to air show, TVNZ / 3 have got the funding for CC over the airwaves for them.

If only the list were that small.... There are a number of series she follows that are no longer prime time and only shown on demand or other streaming services without captions. In some cases we have reverted to purchasing the series DVD's or bluerays x Amazon.

I will be installing a couple of PVR's closer to Sept when the Tivo service goes, pity the Fetch TV Mighty is not offered in NZ as it appears to be a reasonable Tivo replacement.

In some cases we have reverted to purchasing the series DVD's or bluerays x Amazon.

We did that before netflix 3 years ago, there was some that had CC for the usa blueray version, but the UK version we ordered did not - that very much beep me off and ended up bittorrenting the TV show and got the CC for them off the internet, so check where you can that the version do have CC before ordering. (after getting the blueray we google it and there was lots of beep off people with the UK version and CC not being on it)

I guess it depends where you source your bittorrent files from. Unfortunately I'm hard of hearing too and I have found bittorrent to be the only place to reliably find captions. The people that do it tend to use freely available tools to add, re-time, and correct the captions so I'm afraid I am forced to call bullshît when a commercial provider says they receive them out of time or in an incorrect format. That is quite a simple fix and can be automated.

These people do not charge for their time so people can enjoy - lots of these people have people like you as love ones and want them to enjoy it so donate their time to do it, but to get that done on the like of lightbox, then you need to at the least pay 1 person, most like 2 so they can go on holiday and be sick, to do this, that is 1 or 2 wages cost that they do not need to pay, then you got the support cost for fixing any miss timing etc that come in, on top of that the system has to be HDCP certified which means the free software is out - costs do add up, and commercial provider have done the sums and gone this is a lost making for us, we do not need to do it, so do not do it. If the cost come down so the people like you and me and the OP buying the services is greater then the cost, then you will get lightbox doing it - insert a tui ad here, or law is changed and they have to, then again they would do it.

What does HDCP have to do with altering caption timing pre-broadcast? The wages of one or two more full time staff (as I said, these tools can be automated so not a guaranteed cost) would be offset since they would be able to offer a service that a lot of New Zealanders would love to use but currently cannot.

What does HDCP have to do with altering caption timing pre-broadcast? The wages of one or two more full time staff (as I said, these tools can be automated so not a guaranteed cost) would be offset since they would be able to offer a service that a lot of New Zealanders would love to use but currently cannot.

alot - the media company have all the power - to get broadcast rights you need to meet their standard and sign off method of broadcast, if it not to their liking then tvnz, lightbox etc lose their right to broadcast it, so anything that changes broadcast need to be certified by the media company, this is not cheap, and cost lot of time and money and is the main cost, also as the script is copyright and not free even if you do CC yourself - there is alot of hidden cost to CC. As i have said, they have done all the sum on total cost of doing this vs increase sales, and it does not come close for streaming, at the current cost, it will be 20 - 30 years before it might be cost effective so it not going to happen any time soon with out law change.